Don’t tell itHow to use video to engage with your

customers, members, and prospects

Sh w it,

© 2013 Copyright Constant Contact, Inc. 11-2317

www.constantcontact.com/learning-centerInsight provided by Constant Contact KnowHow

How to Use Video to Engage with Your Customers, Members, and Prospects

Do you like to watch videos? Who doesn’t?! Visible Measures’ Q2

2012 Social Video Advertising Report found that almost 900 million

people watched video online in the second quarter of 2012, making

it the second largest quarter for online video ever.

That’s a 45% jump from Q2 2011 and a jump of nearly 75% from

Q2 2010.

People aren’t just watching the latest viral videos, they’re also

watching clips from their favorite businesses and organizations.

If you haven’t started experimenting with online video, now might

be the time. You don’t need a fancy production crew or a big

budget, either. You just need a good story and a smartphone or

digital camera.

In this guide, we’ll share with you why your business or organization

should be leveraging online video in your marketing efforts, give you

a few ideas for getting started, and provide a few tips for shooting a

quality video without breaking the bank.

Show It, Don’t Tell It

www.constantcontact.com/learning-centerInsight provided by Constant Contact KnowHow

How to Use Video to Engage with Your Customers, Members, and Prospects

Video engages people in a way that photos and text alone can’t. For small business owners and nonprofit managers, using video in your marketing can bring faces, voices, personality, and heart to your operation, while also demonstrating your authenticity. To top that, on sites like Facebook, video posts generate 100% more engagement than text-only posts.

If that kind of engagement isn’t enough to convince you, here are five more reasons to add video to your marketing mix.

1. Tell your story quickly. People don’t have a lot of time, so you want to get your message across

quickly. Video can communicate a lot of information in a short amount of time.

Inexpensive software tools such as Apple iMovie or Windows Live Movie Maker

can be used to easily edit your video, add titles, music, and get it ready for

uploading to a video hosting site.

2. Put a face to your business or organization. A video helps bring your business or organization to life, and it makes your

communications more personal. Putting people on camera makes you and your

team real to your customers and members.

3. Get your readers to remember your message. Let’s face it: In general, we remember little of what we read. Our retention of

a message is much better (estimates are three times better) when it includes

pictures, sound, and motion. Your readers can only take action if they remember

what you said.

4. People enjoy video. People like to read, but they really like video. We watch TV, go to the movies,

stream video content to our computers and mobile phones, and more.

Why Use Video?

www.constantcontact.com/learning-centerInsight provided by Constant Contact KnowHow

How to Use Video to Engage with Your Customers, Members, and Prospects

As an author and speaker, and the owner of Fourword

Marketing in Toronto, video has become an effective way for

Marc Gordon to market himself and his company in a way that

he believes cannot be accomplished with words alone.

“The impact of video is far beyond what you can do in a

written blog,” Marc explains. “You can present things on so

many different levels and illustrate examples in settings that

people can visually understand, which can be challenging to do

in a written blog.”

Since March 2010, Marc has produced MarcTV, a bi-weekly six-

minute program that covers topics ranging from how to create

a killer press release to good business networking practices.

Marc shoots the videos in his “studio” — i.e., his office when

filled with a few lights and a backdrop — and out and about

Customer Spotlight: Video Works for Fourword Marketing

5. Videos are easy and inexpensive to create. The great myth is that video is hard and expensive to create. Yes, the ads you see

during the Super Bowl cost a lot, but you don’t have to spend much to get good

video. If you already have a smartphone, laptop, or tablet—you likely already have

a camera that can create high quality video. If you want to take things a step

further, video cameras like the Kodak Z18 are available for around $450 and are

capable of shooting videos in HD.

Plus, it’s free to host video on sites such as YouTube, Blip.tv, and Vimeo, making your

videos easily accessible, easily shared through social media, and easily embeded on web

sites and in blog posts. Not only that, videos hosted on these sites can help your search

engine optimization (SEO) efforts as they give sites like Google and Bing yet another

piece of content associated with your brand to crawl and serve up to the masses.

www.constantcontact.com/learning-centerInsight provided by Constant Contact KnowHow

How to Use Video to Engage with Your Customers, Members, and Prospects

“The impact of video is far beyond what you can do in a written blog.”

Video Ideas for One and AllAs with any type of marketing content, it may be difficult to think of video topics that

apply to your business or organization. But there are plenty of simple ideas out there

that can help jump-start your video efforts. Among them:

1. Thank your customers for their business or your volunteers for their support.

Film yourself or a few of your staff members giving their well wishes, and stitch the

clips together as fun way to say “thanks” to all those who support your business or

organization.

in his native Canada. Once posted to his Vimeo account and

embedded in a blog post, Marc promotes the videos across

multiple channels, including his Constant Contact–based email list

and social media sites like Twitter and Facebook.

Marc uses a single camera and a wireless microphone for each

shoot. When on location, Marc has a colleague shoot the video,

but in the office, a tripod acts as the lone cameraman. Editing

is done with Apple’s iMovie software. “A lot of people put in

a lot of transitions and effects,” says Marc, who does all the

editing himself. “You don’t need that. It’s all about simple, clean

transitions that keep the video nice and clean. Let the content be

the draw.”

For Marc, the message is important, but humor is a key aspect

of his video effort. For instance, in a Halloween episode, Marc

went shopping dressed as Wonder Woman. He also likes to

use edgier titles on his videos to draw attention to certain clips

— a tactic that seems to be working: Views of his videos have

grown steadily and his email list has grown 29% since he started

MarcTV.

“My initial goal was use MarcTV as a marketing tool to promote

myself as an expert and personality,” Marc says. “But the

popularity of the show has really given it a life of its own. People

from all kinds of industries are now reaching out to me as a result

of the videos.”

www.constantcontact.com/learning-centerInsight provided by Constant Contact KnowHow

How to Use Video to Engage with Your Customers, Members, and Prospects

2. Feature a customer raving about your company, product, or service. Catch

people when they’re happy: getting ready to leave your restaurant after a great meal,

just taking their first bites of that ice cream cone, or if they stop by to express their

happiness with your service.

3. Share a cool company milestone. For example, when Constant Contact’s logo

went up on our building, we filmed it. Any time your organization celebrates an

achievement, film the celebration and put snippets up to share with your customers and

members.

4. Announce a fundraiser or special event. Let people know what you’re doing and

why they would want to be involved. NYC nonprofit, Pajama Program used video to

show people the difference their involvement can make.

5. Ask for feedback from your subscribers. Each week, we shoot a video interview

where we answer questions we receive from readers on our blog or attendees at our

marketing webinars. We post the “Ask an Expert” interview to our blog and encourage

viewers to share their questions, as well.

6. Share your expertise or provide tips for using your products.

• A mechanic could show what he looks for when examining various parts for wear

• Sales folks can demonstrate how their products work together

• Any business can introduce a new website and its features

7. Put the spotlight on your team to highlight your weird or wacky culture.

8. Review a book that your members or customers may enjoy.

9. Share highlights from a past year’s event to promote an upcoming gathering.

10. Have your staff wish customers and members a happy holidays.

10 Ways to Use Video to Market Your Small Business

www.constantcontact.com/learning-centerInsight provided by Constant Contact KnowHow

How to Use Video to Engage with Your Customers, Members, and Prospects

Your video content doesn’t even have to be 30 frames-per-second of moving pictures.

You could also:

Use Images with voiceover. Pictures or images are a great way to communicate.

If you like, you can easily use what is known as voiceover on an image. This combines a

narrative that you can record over the image. String a set of these together to tell your story.

• Your pictures: Using any camera, take pictures of your building, product, people,

etc.

• Images: There are lots of places on the web to get images, either for free

or for a relatively small investment. A few examples include Google Images,

iStockphoto,Flickr, and stock.xchng.

Note: As with any media, be careful you’re abiding by copyright law.

Create a Screencast. Capturing a demonstration of your product or a walk-

through of your business or organization using your website is another way to create

engaging video. Screencast software runs on your computer and captures what takes

place on the screen. You can also record your voice speaking at the same time or add

music. The combination makes for an informative and engaging experience.

There are many software tools that enable you to take an image and add a voiceover.

Examples are Microsoft’s PowerPoint (10.0 or greater), Apple’s Keynote, TechSmith’s

Camtasia, and iMovie.

4 Tips for Shooting Quality Video

It doesn’t take thousands of dollars in gear to make a great video, but paying attention

to a few details will make your final product that much better:

1. Whenever possible, use a tripod. Keeping the camera steady will make for better picture quality when you upload your

video to a service like YouTube. Plus, your viewers won’t get seasick while watching.

www.constantcontact.com/learning-centerInsight provided by Constant Contact KnowHow

How to Use Video to Engage with Your Customers, Members, and Prospects

Video is a fun and effective marketing tool that’s accessible to any business or

organization — even those who are on a tight budget. Think about which of your

marketing messages could benefit most by the color that video brings to the mix. If

a picture says 1,000 words, a video can say it bigger, brighter, and better.

Did you find this guide helpful? Share it with your fans and followers!

Video Is a Great Marketing Tool

2. Film in a quiet area. This is particularly important if the only mic you have is the one built-in to the camera as

those tend to pick up all the ambient noise as well as the speaker. In these cases, the less

ambient noise, the better.

3. Bright light is good. Cameras have come a long way when it comes to the ability to record in low light, but

the more light you can provide, the better the video quality. When filming, have the

subject facing the main source of light, not in front it:

4. Orientation is key. When shooting on an iPhone, Android, or other video-capable smartphone, make

sure to hold the device in a landscape (horizontal) mode and not vertically. Holding it

vertically makes for a messy editing process as you crop the video to fit a standard size

video window.

Bad Light Good Light

6

Online Engagement Marketing tools & coaching to help small businesses and nonprofits grow.

Connect with Constant Contact. Everywhere.

Email MarketingGet your message read

and shared by your audience fast.

EventSpotControl every phase of the event process

from one place.

Social CampaignsTurn Facebook “likes” and shares into real, measurable results.

SaveLocalCreate deals your way and find your

next great customer.